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Yesterday I gave a webinar presentation for the Australian Association for Virtual Industry Professionals on the support package available for self-employed people, including sole traders, if you’re employing others and so on.

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We’ve been pretty quiet during January on issuing news alerts. That’s because we’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation for 2020. This year we’re making a big push for key reform issues for self-employed small business people. The timing is right because there is heightened political interest in small business issues.

Our 2020 campaign agenda has three key targets, all to do with small business people receiving a fair deal: More...

Since the Global Financial Crisis, unemployment has dropped to low levels in most of the developed world at least. That’s fantastic. It needs to continue.

One of the important factors in this positive trend seems to be the evolution of work arrangements that enable quick responses to fast-moving markets and consumers. Flexible work creates work! But this gets regulation-lovers worried. They reckon that if work isn’t controlled through government regulation, there’s got to be something wrong. Currently their focus is on the so-called ‘gig’ economy. Apparently, it’s a big ‘problem’ that needs a solution.  More...

I was in an Uber the other day and got talking to my driver. He was a Sikh. We had quite a conversation about his religion and the importance of it to his everyday life. I’ve never met a Sikh before! He was most interesting. I asked him why he drives Uber. His response was quick. He loves being his own boss. He can make his work fit around his family commitments.

My Sikh driver reminded me of why we at Self-Employed Australia have been doing what we do for almost 20 years. We’ve been defending the right of people to be self-employed. We’ve seen attacks from many directions. The attackers always seem to argue that somehow ‘we’ are being exploited. They can’t seem to contemplate that in self-employment there is economic liberty and freedom! My Sikh driver knows and lives that reality.  More...

We’re most pleased to see the head of the Australian Consumer and Competition Council (ACCC), Rod Sims, call for the unfair contract laws to be given ‘teeth’.  Good on you, Rod. We back you on this one!

The unfair contract laws for small business passed parliament in late 2015. We called the laws ‘A welcome disruption to the economy.’ The passing of the laws was the end of a seven-year campaign by us battling the big end of town. Here’s the history of our campaign. We nearly didn’t succeed, as the dollar limit on contracts was to be set so low as to neuter the laws. But the Senate came to the rescue and amended the laws.  More...

The supposed ‘rise’ of the ‘gig’ economy is causing much debate on whether its impacts are good or evil for society. There’s much confusion.

The author of a new book, Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work, was interviewed on the USA Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) this week where the social issues were discussed. The four-minute interview can be seen here.  More...

A proposed new law would effectively empower the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to bankrupt a business overnight where the ATO held an unproven view that PAYG tax was owed.

The law denies normal access to justice and the truth. It represents a scary step in a progressive crushing of the rule of law in Australia under the excuse of tax collection. We’ve made a submission opposing the Bill. More...

We’re mighty proud of our achievement in securing unfair contract protections for self-employed, small business people. It was a campaign we started in 2009. Here’s our campaign history. It was tough work.

The Australian Bankers Association strongly opposed us and we had several polite but unsuccessful meetings with them. They fought to kill the Bill in 2015, but thanks to some hard work and the Senate our campaign succeeded. The laws started in late 2016. More...

Technology is crushing traditional jobs. The command-and-control factory is being replaced by robots. Banks are rapidly removing pen-pusher jobs by the tens of thousands!!! For those with an economic bent, the Milton Friedman-type assumptions about how an economy operates are dead!

What’s taking over is the ‘gig’ economy. But what is it?  It’s pretty simple really.  More...

In the historic sector of Lisbon, Portugal, nestled quietly next to the imposing 13th Century Lisbon Cathedral is a nondescript block of a building. It houses the Museum of Aljube – Resistance and Freedom. For the naive tourist who wanders in from the intriguing, cobbled alleyways of Lisbon and not familiar with the more recent history of Portugal, the museum is a moving shake-up. The museum records the struggle against the dictatorship that governed Portugal from 1926 to 1974. This is recent history! The museum building itself housed the dictatorship’s secret police. As you move through rooms you find yourself standing in torture cells, places where murder was committed by the state in the name of the state.  More...